Anyone Interested in a small batch of Icarus boards?

[Glasswalker]

Hey, so I'm probing to find out if anyone is interested in picking up a batch of Icarus boards (I would prefer to ship them all at once for simplicity)

I have 17 boards, all working fine. From batch3

They have all been lightly used and well cooled for the past month or so.

I would want to get about 100BTC per board, plus actual shipping costs. I'll throw in the platform programming cable from ngzhang, and 4x power adapter cables (molex drive connector 12v, to 4x barrel plug connectors to power 4 boards per molex)

Bundled together shipping should be fairly affordable. I figure someone looking to expand an existing Icarus cluster may want to pick them up.

I've been having issues with compatibility. I'm not sure why, but the boards on their own work excellent. I'm considering migrating to other options. But first I want to probe interest in the boards.

I'll also include the standoffs for all the cards to build stacks, and the custom 3D Printed brackets I printed to clip them into a chassis.

Let me know in this thread, or via PM if you're interested. If so I'll hold a motion with the Syndicate to approve the sale. And we can ship them immediately.

I'm well verified on these forums, and on GLBSE. Also I'm willing to discuss any options or escrow required.

I'll consider splitting the batches as well as long as we can work out who gets what as far as the platform cables and such.

If you want pics of the current setup see the rig pics thread here in the fpga forum, or hit our private forum thread on the rig here: http://forum.btcsyn.com/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=49
it has tons of photos of the cards, their current setup, brackets, cables and so on.

Thanks!

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[Glasswalker]

The proposed option is that the buyer is responsible for all freight/shipping fees. I'll package it up as safely and efficiently as I can, and ship via one of the easily available methods of your choice (canada post, UPS, Fedex, Purolator, DHL). I'll use an account if you have one.

As I said right now I'm gauging interest, to decide if this is viable. If I get some good interested parties I'll present to shareholders to vote. If you'd like to make an offer, and it happens to be the best offer, I'll present it to the shareholders. But I'm not in a position to negotiate so to speak (short of minor things). I should also note I have received several offers so far via PM, none have quite yet met my initial asking price above, but some are very close.

Does that help clarify?

I have not pulled the boards out to pack/measure/weigh them for shipping as they are in operation. But I don't forsee the shipping within north america being over $100USD at most, just from ballpark estimate. Probably less than that, hard to say.

As for shipping elsewhere in the world, I'd need an offer on the table, and a destination address, so I could even attempt to approximate shipping charges.

They would be shipping from Ontario Canada if that helps.

[Glasswalker]

These boards are still available, please let me know. If you want to make an offer, throw that out there too, so I can present it to shareholders.

Thanks!

[Dhomochevsky]

I've been having issues with compatibility. I'm not sure why, but the boards on their own work excellent.

What do you mean? Can you provide more details? I would be interested in all of the boards (although I'm not from the States).

[Glasswalker]

What I mean is each board is tested and working great. The problem appears to be with my USB Hubs, or my power supply.

IE:
- Hubs malfunctioning
- Hubs have minor compatibility issues causing stability problems when used in conjunction with the chip on the icarus
- Power supply is not putting out clean enough power to keep them stable under higher load
(or some combination of the above 3)

All 16 worked perfectly for a couple weeks, now I can only mine on 12. (I had a loss of internet connectivity, which prompted me to reboot the host machine, after that the problem started, I don't believe that was the cause, I believe the problem was present all along, and the reboot simply "triggered" the symptoms).

I have since tested every board for longterm stability, they all work fine, in groups up to 12. But when I exceed that number it fails. It also fails if I exceed over 6 boards on a single hub (which leads me to believe it's the hubs).

But I've already replaced the hubs in the past for a similar issue, and these new hubs seemed to solve the problem for a couple weeks, then it randomly came back. Also when testing in another machine (12 in one machine, 4 in a second machine) the problem still surfaced. Using completely different hub for the 4 "outside" boards, but they were all still driven from the same PSU, leading me to believe the PSU is at fault.

I am spending a lot of time right now narrowing the problem down in my system, so I want to simply scrap it and start from scratch in order to nail down this niggling systemic issue.

I'm 99% sure it's one of the other components in my system. As I said each individual board works perfectly, and any combination up to no more than 6 per hub, or 12 in total will mine fine (and have been now for over a week without problem). so I know the boards are 100%.

I don't have the funds right now to replace every other component in the system, and replacing only the hub for example doesn't seem to completely help, leading me to think it's a combo of multiple parts in the system. If I sell these off, buy an alternate, and buy new components to start from scratch I will save myself a lot of time and aggrivation.

Does that help clear it up for you?

Also No worries about not being from the USA, neither am I (I'm in Canada).

But, shipping will likely cost more if it's going overseas, so let me know via PM what your address is and I can estimate shipping, then we can settle on a possible price.

[allinvain]

Hmm, you had enough funds to buy 17 of these at $464 a piece but don't have enough to buy a new PSU? Try replacing the PSU. Also I'm wondering what type/make/brand of USB hub you're using. Do you have pics of all the hardware involved or any more details?

[Glasswalker]

The batch is now sold. I have a buyer who has put down a deposit until they can secure the remaining BTC for the sale early this week.

As for the purchase price of the boards, be aware the Batch3 Icarus sold for nearly $560 NOT $470 (which the final community batch buy of 50 boards sold for, otherwise that price required batch buys of 30+ at a time). And that money didn't come from me personally. It came from investors in the syndicate.

As for why I can't buy a PSU? I can... But the problem is I don't know that it's the PSU. And I don't know that it's the hub, (and even if I did, I don't know what I could buy 100% that would solve the problem, aside from replacing the entire system). I've already spent 30+ hours on this problem (some of my details in troubleshooting it are posted in the btcsyn forums), and replaced the hubs and PSU once. I do know the boards work fine, but I wanted to first seek out alternative options, seeing as the issue is systemic, chances are a fully different system (new hubs new power, new board, new software) would just "magically" solve the problem, Especially if it's another user that already has a pile of Icarus boards and wants to expand their cluster (which is what I was expecting for a potential buyer). I simply wanted to explore this option because it would save me the time/effort fighting with the problem, and the money spent trying to isolate the problem (potentially requiring multiple replacement parts). All of which would be eating up money from my shareholders. I felt if it was possible this option presented the best benefit to my shareholders, so I wanted to explore if it was possible. As it turns out it was, I had a lot of interest, many buyers, one eventually won out, and now has a deposit and will send remaining payment early next week.

As for the hubs, I started with some generic "no-name" chinese 4port hubs (because ngzhang assured me the hubs wouldn't matter at all). They had issues similar to what I have now. I then switched to 2x 10port ICAN branded powered hubs for about $25/each. These worked beautifully as soon as I got them, and mined reliably for 2 weeks, then after the outage I experienced they began flaking out the same as the cheaper 4port ones did.

I believe the problem is at least partially the PSU, but it's also related to USB. Several users have reported similar issues with the Batch3 Icarus boards. They seem to have minor compatibility issues with several hubs, or with USB chipsets that *sometimes* causes minor instability (and replacing either the hubs, or the motherboard tend to solve the issue). It's an extremely transient issue, and extremely hard to troubleshoot. At this point I've burned like 30+ hours fighting with this issue, so I wanted to seek an alternative course of action.

In my case I need to have boards I can plug in, setup right from the get-go and mine on them with minimal intervention. Constant downtime requiring hours of my time is not ideal. Hopefully an alternate solution for us (which we will dedicate the funds coming from this sale to) will provide that. (then again possibly not, that's the risk I take with this course of action). I know ngzhang makes good boards, and these are an awesome product, that on their own work well. I'm sure the problem is systemic, and mostly just due to bad luck in selecting the products that happen to be incompatible, but I don't want to spend the money to replace the entire system surrounding the boards. And troubleshooting it the "conventional" way is becoming tiresome

Does that help clarify the situation with these boards?

[allinvain]

Thanks for clarifying that. I was not aware this setup was bough with investors funds, but in light of that I can totally understand your move. Compatibility issues can be tricky to solve and I agree sometimes it is not worth the headache.

Hopefully the new owner won't experience any issues.

Anyways, congrats on the sale and I hope you find a suitable alternative? (BFL maybe? Lacelot?)

[Glasswalker]

I'll provide whatever help I can to the new buyer, and they already have an Icarus cluster running, so I suspect (and hope) that they won't even experience any trouble out of the gate. But if they do I'll provide whatever guidance I can and the results of my trials which should help guide them into solving it.

We already have an alternative lined up. But need to wait until the funds are in-hand before we action on it.

Thanks!

[Raize]

If your deal falls through for some reason, please send me a PM.

[Glasswalker]

Will Do, though at this point I doubt it will fall through. If for some reason it does, you're first on my list to contact